Category Archives: Spanish KS5

Attached is a booklet listing all vocabulary for both EdExcel and AQA GCSE. This version is for Higher Level GCSE. It’s an immense thing, but we have copied it and asked students to keep it at home for revision / independent learning.

I am teaching the film VOLVER as part of the A level Spanish course. There are some great resources and I have relied on the ZigZag booklet as well as the Hodder Education book esp. as I had never taught this before. Attached are some resources I put together on the use of the colour red in the film. A number of the slides are adapted from other resources shared on blogs, etc. Thanks to all those people who share + do not charge money! The PowerPoint starts with a recap from my previous lesson on the theme of death, etc. The videos are adapted from ones I found on YouTube. They required a bit of editing down to make them useable. Hope the resources are of some use.

I have been updating my resources in order to teach the topic of monarchy and dictatorship as part of the A level Spanish course. In doing so I came across a great worksheet on www.spectrumspanish.com titled Franco y el bikini. I was unaware of this story and the short film made a few years ago. I have added this into the attached PowerPoint with some background videos although you will have to go to the spectrumspanish website and buy the worksheet yourself. It’s worth it! Hopefully the other activities on the PowerPoint are self-explanatory although I’m going to work on improving the look of the presentation over the summer.

This activity is intended to stimulate talk in a lesson. Students are all talking about fidget spinners at the moment and justifying their use. I didn’t realise that so many of my students had attention problems, but there you go. With the PowerPoint (posted below) I intend to use the first slide to raise awareness of Spanish being a world language + there is a hyperlink to TeleMundo Miami. As we are required to use authentic material as part of the new GCSE I’m trying to look at target language websites as much as possible. On slide 2 the Telemundo report video is difficult, but I will be adding my own commentary to break it down + I will be asking questions such as what the report is about, what the teachers in the report think of fidget spinners, etc. The 3rd slide could be written or spoken. With the 4th slide I want them to give their views on whether the spinners should be banned or not. There are key phrases I want my set 3 Year 10 students to use as part of this activity – “Estoy de acuerdo / No estoy de acuerdo” + I will be asking the students for their views. In my response I will use phrases such as “X dice que el spinner es una distracción. ¿Estás de acuerdo? [asking another student]”. I want to familiarise them with “X dice que …” as it will be useful for them to know and use throughout the course

I’ve been putting a lot of effort into getting ready to teach the literature element of the new A level. We are going with Como Agua Para Chocolate. In the build up to studying the novel I am going to do some background work on Mexico. The attached resources are the ones I have prepared. I’m not sure that I will use everything as I don’t want to spend too long on this. I will probably use some tasks for homework.

One of the new topics at A level for languages is that of LGBT rights. There are, of course, resources in the new textbooks which have been produced, but I have created some additional materials. The attached PowerPoint and worksheets focus on homophobia in sports and football in particular. The case of Jesús Tomillero, Spain’s first openly gay referee, is highlighted as well as the rainbow laces campaign. The videos are embedded and should play when clicked.

Like many others, I am spending a lot of time developing teaching resources, assessment materials and homework tasks for the new Spanish A level. We are following the AQA syllabus in my school. In developing the new course, I have been trying to give my group plenty of reading practice using the exercise types that appear in the exam e.g. gap fills, synonym search and translation into Spanish based on a text the students can read. Attached are three resources I have made based on recent news items from Spain. I am uploading them in Word so that anyone interested can do what I do and use the format for other texts. I am quite fond of the gap fill exercises as homework tasks given that they are easy to mark.